FISC Says It Will Declassify Ruling That Forced Yahoo Into PRISM

from the how-much-black-ink-will-they-use-up? dept

Last month, we noted that, while it was known that a tech company had fought back against a surveillance effort by the government and lost, it hadn't yet been revealed who that company was. The NY Times then revealed that it was Yahoo!, and it involved whether or not Yahoo! would be involved in PRISM. Yahoo tried to fight it, lost, and had to comply -- but the details (of course) remained entirely sealed. It appears that's changing. Yahoo! has been asking the government if it can reveal more info, and eventually the government (at the very least) allowed Yahoo to admit that it was the party in the case. After that, Yahoo asked FISC if the ruling could be declassified, and the court has now
told the government to review the ruling to figure out what can be declassified.

The Government shall conduct a declassification review of this Court's
Memorandum Opinion of April 25, 2008, and (2) the legal briefs submitted by the parties to this
Court in this matter. After such review, the Court anticipates publishing that Memorandum
Opinion in a form that redacts any properly classified information.

Of course, given the government's history of over-redacting, I fully expect a document with a ridiculous amount of black ink applied (invest now in black ink!). However, I do wonder if this is part of the various FISC judges realizing that there's been a fairly strong outcry against their secret court with a big rubber stamp.